Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  “Maybe.” Iceni nodded as well, to herself as well as in response to Drakon. “That leaves the exact nature of the association vague but projects a strong image, an image that has nothing in common with the Syndicate. But we don’t just need an abstract symbol. When were you planning on asking about the other thing?”

  “The other thing?” Drakon shook his head. “What would that be?”

  “The public face of our not-the-Syndicate-or-the-Alliance group of stars. You? Or me? Or both of us? What is the face of the Phoenix?”

  He smiled slightly. “I was assuming both of us. Me to frighten people, and you to project that image of indestructible protection.”

  She spent a long moment eyeing him, trying to figure out if Drakon had made a sarcastic jab at her. “Protection? That’s my image?”

  “That’s what our citizens want from their president,” Drakon said. “And that’s how we want them to think, right? Protection from the sort of things that happened at Kane.”

  That certainly sounded like a compliment, but Iceni still felt an odd irritation at the image. “Fine. But do you think I need you beside me to look frightening to our enemies?”

  His smile grew but stayed enigmatic. “No. Your wrath can inspire plenty of fear, and for good reason.”

  “I’m glad you realize that.” Her eyes narrowed as she thought. “There are advantages to being able to employ the old good cop/bad cop routine. I have no idea how long that tactic has been around, but I do know that it has endured because it works so often. I don’t want either of us locked into one of those roles, though. It might inspire someone to think knocking off one of us would cripple the other. We need to both look strong, but not menacing, to those inside our realm of control. We need to look strong and menacing to those outside.”

  “Agreed.” Drakon gestured in the direction of the confinement cells. “Speaking of those inside and outside, Colonel Malin says CEO Boyens hasn’t been able to tell us much more.”

  “No.” Iceni flipped her hand in the same direction, giving the gesture equal measures of disdain and aggression. “Boyens is spending his time trying to get information out of us instead of answering our questions. I think he’s trying to build the best picture he can of conditions here so he can decide which way to commit.”

  “That doesn’t make much sense,” Drakon said. “If he’s already on the run from the Syndicate, he can’t just jump back into their laps.”

  “That’s the question. Is he on the run from the Syndicate? Was he sent here with information we would consider valuable but that the Syndicate didn’t think would enable us to stop their flotilla?”

  Drakon thought about that, his brow lowering. “Which would potentially give him a chance to get inside our operations again. Is Boyens their fail-safe if that flotilla didn’t succeed?”

  “I asked you first.” Iceni glared at the interruption as an urgent tone sounded to indicate someone wanted to come into her office. “What is it?”

  “An urgent communication,” Togo’s image replied without visible emotion.

  Something he didn’t want anyone but her hearing, apparently. But Drakon had already heard the exchange and was watching her. “Come in,” she told Togo.

  Togo entered, walking to stand beside Iceni’s desk, then waited until the door had once again sealed before replying. “It is Kahiki, Madam President.”

  “Kahiki? It’s been quiet there.”

  “It is quiet again if this communication is truthful,” Togo said. “Kahiki has overthrown Syndicate authority and requests our protection.”

  “Kahiki,” Drakon muttered. “Have you been there?” he asked Iceni.

  “No. There isn’t much there there, is there?”

  “Depends what you’re talking about. There’s a lot of rocks and a lot of bugs. I was sent to inspect the ground defenses, remember? About six months before our revolt. There’s not a lot of good real estate at Kahiki. The only habitable world is a bit too close to the star, so it’s livable but hot, mostly desert with some decent-sized seas. At each pole there are swampy jungle areas that are cool enough for humans to manage though they’re not comfortable by any means.” He paused. “Let’s see. The total system population was about two hundred thousand. Two cities, one at each polar area, and a scattering of towns, including orbital installations at that planet and a couple of others. One brigade of regular Syndicate ground forces.”

  “Jump points allowing access to only one other star system besides Midway,” Togo added, his voice actually sounding stiff at Drakon’s having provided some information to Iceni first.

  Iceni glanced at Drakon to see if he had noticed and saw him looking back at her with a bland expression but sardonic amusement in his eyes. “Most importantly,” Drakon said, “Kahiki has some major research and development labs intended to support the Syndicate war effort and exploit anything that was ever recovered from the enigmas.”

  “Ah, yes,” Iceni said. “I remember that now. Planet of the nerds, my predecessor called it. Supposedly analyzing everything known about the enigmas to determine what they were really like and how to beat them.”

  “Yeah. They’d been working on that for forty years or so before Black Jack came back and found the real answers in a few months. I imagine they’re kind of sore about that.”

  “I imagine that Syndicate CEOs were dictating the researchers’ every creative thought,” Iceni said dryly. “You know what a handicap that can be to actually discovering anything. So, a star system set up for research. They would be a liability at the moment if they want us to protect them, but a very valuable ally to have in the long run. How many snakes were at Kahiki?”

  “Not too many,” Drakon said. “There was a satellite headquarters rather than a full system headquarters for the snakes.”

  “Two hundred twenty ISS agents are listed as having been present at Kahiki according to captured records,” Togo added quickly.

  “That is minimal,” Iceni said. “Or rather, was minimal. I doubt there are still two hundred twenty snakes alive there. What did Kahiki do with its snakes?” she asked Togo.

  “Their message did not say.”

  Iceni switched her attention back to Drakon. “Who was in charge of that brigade of ground forces?”

  He frowned in thought again. “Sub-CEO . . . Santori. She struck me as very by-the-book, very cautious. It was easy to see that she browbeat her staff. They were scared of her but also sabotaging her in subtle ways.”

  “Which came first? Santori’s treatment of them, or the sabotage?”

  “I don’t know, but Santori didn’t impress me.” Drakon looked at Togo. “I’d like to see this message from Kahiki.”

  Iceni nodded to Togo, who nodded back, then touched a control on his data pad.

  The virtual window that appeared next to him showed a half dozen men and women seated at a conference table. Iceni watched and listened, paying less attention to the words than to the tones of voices and the body language of the six people who said they now ruled Kahiki. “What do you think?” she asked Drakon when it finished.

  “The woman on the far left wasn’t Sub-CEO Santori. She was Santori’s executive officer.” Drakon rubbed his chin. “From what I remember, she struck me as unhappy but professional, trying to keep things running despite Santori’s lack of leadership. It looks like she’s in charge of the ground forces at Kahiki now.”

  “We lost some sub-CEOs when we revolted,” Iceni commented.

  “I imagine Santori took a short trip out of a high window courtesy of the executives she had been abusing. Commanders don’t need their troops to like them, but they’d damned well better give the troops grounds to respect them, or sooner or later those troops will find a way to even the score. Those guys who say they’re running Kahiki are definitely scared,” Drakon added.

  “Yes. Either that, or they are very good actors.” Iceni tapped her lips with her forefinger as she studied the last image. “They said that what happened at Kane motivated
them to revolt. CEO Boucher’s attempt at intimidation appears to be backfiring.”

  “It’s plausible,” Drakon said. “But only because we’re here. You heard them. They’ve learned that we now have a battleship and a battle cruiser, and that we’ve repulsed more than one Syndicate attack, so they think we offer potential protection against the Syndicate’s doing to Kahiki what it did to Kane.”

  She gave him a significant glance. “But can we offer protection? We barely managed to repel that last Syndicate attack on us.”

  “Like you said, at the moment, they’re a liability.” Drakon gestured toward the star display. “But a limited liability. As your aide said, there’s only one other jump point to Kahiki besides us, and that’s to Tuvalu. There’s nothing at Tuvalu except a lot of space rocks and an automated emergency station in case anyone passing through needs help. There isn’t any simple way for the Syndicate to get an attack force to Kahiki. More importantly, the normal path for communications from Kahiki to Syndicate authorities was right here, through Midway. It’s going to take a while for the Syndicate to even learn that anything has happened at Kahiki.”

  “You’re sure?” Iceni asked. “The Syndicate didn’t have alternate communications paths in use?”

  “I inspected the defenses,” Drakon reminded her. “That included reviewing comm paths and contingency plans. In an emergency, if Midway fell to the enigmas, Kahiki was to hunker down and use any available spacecraft to send word through Tuvalu. With the lack of a dedicated courier ship or other interstellar craft, and the time involved in getting word out through Tuvalu, everybody at Kahiki knew what that really meant. You’re on your own, and don’t forget to kiss your butts good-bye.”

  Iceni smiled, though the expression had more ferocity than humor to it. “How many times during the war with the Alliance was that the only contingency plan? More than I care to think about. But it’s true that if Midway had fallen to the enigmas, Kahiki would have been indefensible. The Syndicate would have had a lot of trouble doing anything to save or evacuate Kahiki even before Black Jack annihilated so many of the Syndicate’s mobile forces. All right. I am in favor of extending our protection to Kahiki, of inviting them to ally with us.”

  Drakon sat hunched over slightly, his eyes looking off into the distance, then finally nodded. “I agree. But let’s keep the agreement secret for now, along with the fact that Kahiki has revolted. The longer it is before the Syndicate finds out, the longer it will be before they try to come up with a counterattack.”

  “I’ll send a senior official to negotiate the deal. Something along the lines of what we agreed to with Taroa. Is that acceptable? Let me know which representative you want to send for the negotiations.”

  Once again, Drakon spent a while thinking before answering. “Gwen, as long as the agreement is along the same framework as we used with Taroa, there’s no reason for me to insist on having someone looking over the shoulder of your representative.”

  Iceni raised her eyebrows at him, surprised that Drakon had openly expressed that degree of trust in her. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Togo reacting before he could cover it. Oddly enough, he had reacted at the start of Drakon’s statement, not at the end.

  Togo had reacted when Drakon called her Gwen.

  What had she seen in Togo in that brief, unguarded moment? Surprise? Worry? Anger? It was impossible to tell. “That is all,” she told Togo.

  She waited until he had left, then pointed to Ulindi on the star display. “Have you heard anything more about that situation?”

  “No,” Drakon said.

  “Has . . . your agent . . . arrived there yet?”

  “She should be getting there anytime now,” Drakon said. “But I don’t know exactly how she was planning on sneaking into Ulindi, so I don’t know exactly when she’ll be there.”

  “You obviously still trust Colonel Morgan a great deal,” Iceni said, hearing the coldness entering her voice.

  Drakon, judging from the grimace he made, heard it, too. “In certain matters, I still do. She’s very skilled at this sort of thing.”

  “I have heard frequent references to her skills,” Iceni said, wondering if frost was forming on her words. “But in most cases only the vaguest references to where and how she acquired such skills.”

  “I don’t know all of the particulars,” Drakon said, meeting her iciness with a steady gaze. “She had many of those skills when I first met her, so she gained them young. There are things none of us who grew up in the Syndicate system talk about. Colonel Morgan has her share of those.”

  “Colonel Morgan has too many secrets.”

  “We’re in agreement on that. I’m using her skills to help us with Ulindi. Don’t think that means I still trust her in other matters.”

  After Drakon had left, Iceni scowled at the star display. It would simplify things immensely if Morgan died on Ulindi, no matter how that might complicate Drakon’s task. When it comes to double-dealing and death, I have no trouble believing that witch started learning her trade young. I wonder just how young she was.

  Sometime in the past . . .

  Executive Fifth Class Roh Morgan, eighteen years old and recently promoted from Line Worker Fourth Class, leaned back and smiled at the man in the pilot’s seat. She slowly extended one leg toward Executive First Class Jonis, showing off not only the leg itself but also the boot she was wearing.

  Jonis smiled, too, but at the boot, not at her. “Nice work, Roh.”

  “I got everything you wanted,” Morgan said. “Her boots, some skin flakes, a few other subtle pieces of evidence to salt the crime scene.”

  “Excellent.” Putting the aircraft on autopilot, he extended a hand toward Morgan. “The stealth gear.”

  She straightened a bit, reaching into a large pocket in her vest, and brought out an assortment of bracelets, earrings, and rings. “This is the latest gear in the Internal Security Service’s inventory? You’d think the ISS would be prepared to spot its being used.”

  “I told you they wouldn’t.” He held the hand out again, this time demandingly. “There’s always a slight lag between new stealth gear being introduced and defensive sensors being reprogrammed to spot signs of the new gear.”

  Morgan dropped the jewelry into Jonis’s hand. “So it will be useless soon.”

  “Not useless.” Jonis, at least two decades older than Morgan, took on the lecturing tone he enjoyed using with her. “It is still effective. But a smart agent never depends on equipment that can be detected or found, no matter how well disguised it is. If you get caught with gear of this nature, it’s very hard to claim you’re not guilty of something. The lessons I gave you on avoiding attention from my fellow agents are far more valuable in the long run than toys like this. And unlike technical devices, other methods to avoid being noticed don’t become obsolete or need upgrades.” He leered at her. “Once we finish planting this evidence, and Sub-CEO Tarranavi gets nailed for crimes against the Syndicate, I can give you a lot of other lessons of a more personal nature. You know, a lot of other men wouldn’t have waited until now for that kind of payoff in exchange for their . . . guidance.”

  Morgan smiled. “You know the wait will be worth it.”

  “Yes. I think it will.” He laughed again. “After that, as my protégé, you can do a lot of good service as an undercover agent for the ISS and earn the rewards that come with that.”

  “It sounds like I’ll be getting lots of . . . rewards as your protégé,” Morgan purred. “Why do you hate Tarranavi so much? Why do you want her arrested?”

  “Arrested? That’s the least of it. She’ll be executed for sure. But I don’t hate her. I don’t care about her at all. She’s in the way,” Jonis explained matter-of-factly. “I want her job, Tarranavi shows no signs of leaving it or making the kind of real mistake I could exploit, so I’m giving her a nudge off the edge of the cliff, so I can continue on my own way upward. Speaking of mistakes, it’s never a good idea to ask why you�
�re carrying out a mission. Just do it and let your bosses worry about the reasons.” He laughed as if he had just said something funny.

  Morgan laughed, too. She had no trouble putting real amusement into the laugh despite the loathing that filled her as she looked at Jonis. She resisted glancing toward the control panel, knowing that any second now . . .

  A warning light began blinking on the control console, accompanied by an urgent beeping tone. Startled, Executive Jonis turned his head to look at it.

  Roh had already stiffened her hand. Her shoulder pivoted as her arm shot out and drove the hand with deadly accuracy into just the right spot on Jonis’s neck. His spine cracked, then his head slammed into the side of the cockpit under the force of the blow.

  Sighing, Roh massaged her hand, smiling at the blank expression fixed on Jonis’s dead face. “Did you really think I was that young and naïve? That I didn’t know that after you’d had all the fun with me you wanted, you were going to kill me so I couldn’t betray you for setting up Tarranavi? Did you really believe that I wanted to be a snake like you, you scum? Did you forget I’d had commando training and knew how to kill with my bare hands? I guess you did, on all counts. Too bad for you.”

  Dropping the aircraft low, she set it on course toward the nearby mountains, carefully sprinkling the skin flakes from Tarranavi in the cockpit. “I already planted some other evidence of Tarranavi’s involvement in the sabotage I did to this aircraft’s safety systems,” she told Jonis. “That sabotage is what set off the alarm that distracted you for the second I needed. What? Aren’t you pleased at how well I learned your lessons? Oh, that’s right, you’re dead. But it will look like you died when this aircraft hits those mountains and the collision-protection equipment fails to deploy. Poor little snake, his neck broken in the impact! And all the evidence will point to another snake’s being responsible.”

  Hauling out the low-altitude parachute she had brought along, Roh Morgan cast a regretful eye on the stealth gear she had returned to Jonis, the jewelry having fallen from his limp hand to lie sparkling on the floor of the cockpit. “Thanks for warning me how your fellow snakes can trace that stuff,” she told Jonis cheerfully. “Otherwise, I probably would have tried to take it. Hey, did you notice that I’m wearing skin gloves so none of my skin flakes or prints will show up on that gear or in this aircraft? No? Too bad. Good-bye, snake.”